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The Bush administration isn’t about to let democracy or the will of the people stop them from further ruining this country before they leave office. Knowing he can’t get his long list of favors to his Republican cronies through Congress, Bush is doing a last minute end-run, jamming as many rules through the executive branch as he can during his waning days in power. These so-called “midnight regulations” will allow factories to pollute more, further restrict women’s access to abortion services, cut off aid to needy families in the middle of a recession, and much more — all without Congress’ oversight or approval. It’s wrong, it’s antidemocratic, but, sadly, it’s legal.

When given the opportunity to be “naughty or nice” this holiday season, Bush has clearly opted to go down as one of the naughtiest, most sinister presidents in our nation’s history. We’ve created a satirical spin on the famous poem, ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas, in order to show President Bush crafting his last-minute agenda for health care, the environment, civil liberties, and labor practices — rules that will affect everyone and will be difficult for the next administration to overturn. We are using humor here in the hopes that it both commands people’s attention and enables us to shine a light on these all-too-serious midnight regulations.

After you’ve enjoyed this video, send it to friends and family and don’t forget to digg it. Let them know the harm President Bush’s midnight regulations will bring. And stress the fact that there are far too many Congressional representatives who have remained silent while Bush pushes midnight regulations that will wreak havoc on the lives of their constituents and local communities. We must call the tacit approval of these representatives into question.

Keep in mind that it’s not just voters in blue states who will be affected — these midnight regulations will hurt people in the states and districts of Bush’s enablers in Congress. And remember that these last-minute policies are the outcome of Congressional Republicans’ loyal support for the Bush agenda over the past eight years. We should hold them accountable for the huge lump of coal Bush is handing over to the nation this Christmas.

Yours,
Robert Greenwald
and the Brave New Films team

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The day after the election, the Wall Street Journal posted an opinion article lamenting the treatment that president Bush has been receiving from the American public. The WSJ not only calls criticisms of Bush “disgraceful,” but implies that the treatment (re: criticism) Bush gets from the American people will embolden our enemies.

The poor president not only faces “relentless attacks” from the left, but was abandoned and left out in the cold by the right. No matter what the poor president does he just can’t escape the blame for the past 8 years of America’s problems. All he wanted was a little bit of unquestioning loyalty, a pocket full of blank checks to cash whenever he needed to exercise his divine mandate to rule. Instead the American people either shamefully criticized him or turned their backs saying “hey, he’s your friend – you brought him to the party…I came with the maverick.”

According to the piece, the American people have no character and are weak, cruel, and slanderous. If only we just accepted the regent’s mandates we would have crushed our enemies, kept our economy running, and all gone to sleep at night safely wrapped in our American flags under the watchful paternal eyes of homeland security. Instead we no longer can afford to press our button down Oxford shirts and silk ties, illegal immigrants sneak into our homes at night to steal jobs and mortgages, and our enemies will slaughter us all in the coming apocalypse.

Are you sad yet? Are you feeling a little bit sympathetic? Are you ready to pat poor W on the head, maybe scratch him behind the ear a little and tell him that you’re sorry? I for one, am not.

I’m also not cruel, slanderous, or weak. I am not arrogant and have plenty of resolve – the kind you get from standing up for what you believe, not from kowtowing to the whims of a would be monarch and his court. As for character, I ask you this – who has more character – the son of a powerful family handed the best education, a get of of Vietnam free card, and eventually the presidency or the sons and daughters of families who worked three jobs to get through college, face insurmountable debt to creditors, and were sent to bleed and die on foreign battlefields for questionable motives and platitudes about freedom and liberty?

How, how, how did we ever get ourselves in a predicament where an Oriental-style despot controls American medicine and most doctors fear to prescribe what they think best for their patients? Why, over 200 years after a war to liberate ourselves from a half-mad king, have we allowed our lives and health to come under the rule of a totally mad Tsar? And has this monstrous tumor destroyed most of the Constitution only “by accident,” or did its creators have that intent all along?

Well, here’s my theory:

Most people think the TSOG [Tsarist Occupation Government] began its infestation of America with George Bush Sr., when he appointed a Tsar to discombobulate our previously democratic form of government; but Bush had a long C.I.A. career behind him and the C.I.A. had a long, long Tsarist history before they came out in the open with a public and blatant Tsar, a functionary not endowed or permitted by any clause in our Constitution.

Actually, the TSOG began replacing representative democracy in the U.S. way back in 1945, when Gen. Rheinhard Gehlen, Hitler’s Chief of Soviet Intelligence, surrendered to the U.S. Army, after first prudently burying several truckloads of “inside information” about the Soviet Union at a secret location.

Gehlen was not only a master spy but a wizard negotiator. Within a week, he was out of his Nazi uniform and into a U.S. Army General’s uniform; the U.S. intelligence services, in return, got the info about the Soviets, including access to Gehlen’s agents in the Soviet government — a group of Mystical Tsarists who had infiltrated both the Red Army and the KGB.

You see, their leader and Gehlen’s major “asset,” General Andrei Vlassov, had a fervent belief, not just in common or garden Tsarism, but especially in the “mystical Tsarism” espoused in the later half of the 19th Century by the anti-Semitic novelist Dostoyevsky and even more by Konstantin Pobedonostsev, an advisor to two Tsars [Alexander III and Nicholas II].

Pobedonostsev, popularly called “The Grand Inquisitor” because of the vast platoons of spies, snoops, agents provocateur and informers he unleashed upon the Russian people , combined theological obsessions with reactionary politics, always an explosive and nefarious mixture.

“Mystical Tsarism” deserves a whole book in itself. especially since it now rules our own country; but we must be brief here. This holy religion, or superstition — as you will –has two major tenets: (1) The Tsar is guided by God and can do no wrong (2) Reason is “cold” and inhuman, faith is “warm” and human; therefore we should ignore reason and guide ourselves by faith in the Tsar, our “Little Father.” I don’t think any of Pobedonostsev’s crew actually believed in the Tooth Fairy, though.

Besides, Roman Catholics of the old school have similar attitudes, but merely prefer a Pope to do their thinking for them instead of a Tsar, and most of us consider them sane, but just “weird.”

By Randall Mikkelsen for Reuters (Additional reporting by Edith Honan in New York; Editing by David Alexander and David Wiessler)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President George W. Bush signed a law on Thursday overhauling the rules for eavesdropping on terrorism suspects but immediately met a civil liberties challenge calling it a threat to Americans’ privacy.

“This law will protect the liberties of our citizens while maintaining the vital flow of intelligence,” Bush said at a White House ceremony to mark a rare legislative victory for the president during his last year in office.

The American Civil Liberties Union filed suit in Manhattan federal court as Bush signed the measure and called for the law to be voided as a violation of constitutional speech and privacy protections.

“Spying on Americans without warrants or judicial approval is an abuse of government power, and that’s exactly what this law allows,” ACLU Executive Director Anthony Romero said in announcing the suit.

The action was filed on behalf of human-rights groups, journalists, labor organizations and others who say they fear the law will allow the U.S. government to monitor their activities, including compiling of critical reports on the United States.

Bush quickly signed the bill a day after Congress gave it final approval, with Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama dropping earlier opposition to vote for passage. Obama’s Republican rival, Sen. John McCain, has supported the bill but was absent for Wednesday’s vote.
Read more.

The man who put Charles Manson in the big house wants to do the same thing for the occupant of the White House. At the very least. Just the title of legendary prosecutor and best-selling true-crime author Vincent Bugliosi’s new book makes it a hot potato: “The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder” (Vanguard Press, $26.95, currently No. 12 on The New York Times hardcover nonfiction list). Nutshell: Because the president lied America into war, he’s responsible for every resulting death.

In other words, light reading.

Bugliosi, 73, told me by phone from his Los Angeles home I was the only one from a major paper to interview him so far, and no TV either. Said he’s been “blacked out” for the first time.
Read more.

Kucinich tells us he’s giving the House Judiciary Committee 30 days to act on his resolution proposing 35 articles of impeachment against President Bush or else he’ll raise even more hell on the House floor. Thirty-five articles was just the tip of the iceberg. If Judiciary does nothing, he’ll go back to the House floor next month armed with nearly twice as many articles.

House and Senate leaders agreed yesterday on surveillance legislation that could shield telecommunications companies from privacy lawsuits, handing President Bush one of the last major legislative victories he is likely to achieve.

The agreement extends the government’s ability to eavesdrop on espionage and terrorism suspects while effectively providing a legal escape hatch for AT&T, Verizon Communications and other telecom firms. They face more than 40 lawsuits that allege they violated customers’ privacy rights by helping the government conduct a warrantless spying program after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

The breakthrough on the legislation came hours after the White House agreed to Democratic demands for domestic spending additions to an emergency war funding bill. Taken together, the bills — two of the last major pieces of legislation to be approved by Congress this year — suggest that Bush still wields considerable clout on national security issues but now must acquiesce to Democratic demands on favored domestic priorities to secure victory.

Editor’s Note: In other words, Democrats are kowtowing to Bush left and right. What is the difference between the two major parties? Retroactive legal protection? I thought retroactive laws were illegal.